tools of his
profession. Lewis was in plain distress, for he held the law and its
disposition to be inviolable; the boy stood with a find defiance,
ennobled by the trust in his father's honor. One could not take his
stratagem for a criminal act; he was only a child, for all his twenty
years of life. And yet Lewis saw the elements of crime, and he knew that
Gosford was writing down the evidence.

It was my father who broke the silence.

"Gosford," he said, "what scheme were you and Marshall about?"

"You may wonder, sir," replied the Englishman, continuing to write at
his notes; "I shall not tell you."

"But I will tell you," said the boy. "My father thought that the states
in this republic could not hold together very much longer. He believed
that the country would divide, and the South set up a separate
government. He hoped this might come about without a war. He was in
horror of a war. He had traveled; he had seen nations and read their
history, and he knew what civil wars were. I have heard him say that men
did not realize what they were talking when they urged war."

He paused and looked at Gosford.

"My father was convinced that the South would finally set up an
independent government, but he hoped a war might not follow. He believed
that if this new government were immediately recognized by Great
Britain, the North would accept the inevitable and there would be
no bloodshed. My father went to England with this scheme. He met Mr.
Gosford somewhere--on the ship, I think. And Mr. Gosford succeeded in
convincing my father that if he had a sum of money he could win over
certain powerful persons in the English Government, and so pave the way
to an immediate recognition of the Southern Republic by Great Britain.
He followed my father home and hung about him, and so finally got
his will. My father was careful; he wrote nothing; Mr. Gosford wrote
nothing; there is no evidence of this plan; but my father told me, and
it is true."

My father stopped by the table and lifted his great shoulders.

"And so," he said, "Peyton Marshall imagined a plan like that, and left
its execution to a Mr. Gosford!"

The Englishman put down his pen and addressed my father.

"I would advise you, sir, to require a little proof for your
conclusions. This is a very pretty story, but it is prefaced by an
admission of no evidence, and it comes as a special pleading for a
criminal act. Now, sir, if I chose, if the bequest required it, I